An age old newbie cabinet question

[Locut0s]

Yes I'm sorry this has probably been asked 100s of times before but mine is a little more specific, geographically that is. Anyway a little useless background first:

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Despite the fact that I'm too young to have really appreciated the golden era of arcades, I'm 22, I've really gotten hooked on arcade emulation in the past few years. My current thing has been uploading MAME high score recordings to MARP. Recently I've been seriously thinking of building myself a MAME cabinet. This will simply be a gutted arcade cabinet to house a mame dedicated PC. So I'll be gutting just about *everything*. Since I don't have experience with or confidence in wiring up existing controls to a keyboard I'll probably also rip out the controls and replace them with a prebuilt one from SlikStik or one of the other vendors. Although if the existing controls are still in really good condition and I can find an easy to follow guide I might try my hand at it. Someone pointed out www.ultimarc.com 's IPAC encoder, if this is easy enough to hook up I might take a look at that.
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My main question really is, where would be the best place to search for old broken arcade cabinets. Of course I don't want to ruin a classic cabinet so I'm looking more for a broken junky cabinet that nonetheless still looks good. After all, all I want is the shell everything else is going to go in the garbage. I'm going to call around to the local arcades and ask if they have any broken machines "in the back". But there aren't too many arcades here, Vancouver Canada. I've called up Pladium here and they gave me a name of one of the managers to contact, hopefully that will pan out. I understand that some junk/scrap yards are also sometimes fruitful places to look, even if it is a long shot, though again I'm not sure where to look in Vancouver. I know Ebay is a good place to look, however it would be prohibitively expensive to ship a cabinet anywhere. So I guess my question is am I overlooking any important sources. Also if you know Vancouver can someone recommend a good place to ask around or baring that the location of a junk yard that might be good?

Thanks.

[daywane]

here is how I got my first cab,

http://groups.google.com/groups?

group=rec.games.video.arcade.collecting
I posted I wanted a cab here and got about 5 posts back
list your location and how far you would drive.
1st one was 45 min drive from me and cost $25.00
2nd one was 4 hr one way drive but was free. since I was there I also bought another working one for $125.00
good luck.
also you could post in the buy/sell/trade part of the forums

[GGKoul]

You may want to contact this guy.. as he sells alot of arcade stuff in BC.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=13725&item=6120607575&rd=1

[MoonDog]

if you don't find anything you can always come down here to seattle.  i just got a great deal on a pole position cab yesterday.  he has an asteroids cabinet sitting outside waiting for someone to take it away.  of course, it's not in very good shape, but it's free.

i would suggest picking up the Project Arcade book if you don't feel confident wiring up your own control panel.  it's really not that hard once you get into it.  you could also buy the mini-pac from ultimarc which comes with it's own wiring harness.  i think you'll save a bit of money over going with a slikstik plus have the satisfaction of having built it yourself.

[mopwr]

I got my from a gaming rental company.

They rented dart machines and such for bars/restaurants (phone number is usually on the machines for advertising).

They had a gutted cabinet and gave it to me to get rid of it.  

[GGKoul]

Or you could build your own cab...

[Locut0s]

Wow Thanks for all the replies guys.

daywane: Yes I know of that group and  a.g.v.a.marketplace. I posted messages there with a similar questions and got a few responses like the ones here, but it wasn't an actual official request for a cabinet. If I can't find anything locally myself I'll post an official request there.

GGKoul: Thanks for the link, that looks promising.

MoonDog: That's an interesting idea however logistically it probably wouldn't work for me. (1) I don't have a vehicle capable of carrying it, and renting one for a long enough period of time to go down and get it might negate any savings. (2) I don't have the time in the near future to go down there. I'll keep it in mind though if other avenues don't pan out. Also thanks for the suggestion of getting the mini-pac from ultimarc.

GGKoul: About building my own cabinet, I have thought of that too and it really looks fun! However plywood isn't cheap and it would probably end up costing me more than picking up a junk cabinet. I'm definitely keeping that option open though!

[daywane]

Wow Thanks for all the replies guys.



 (1) I don't have a vehicle capable of carrying it,

I used a S10 blazer for two of my normal size cabs. fit just fine. My nintendo VS UNI
system is a monster. I had to rent the largest trailor Uhaul had. It was larger than my truck.   I had many people laugh as I was driving down the free way

[Robopede]

plywood isn't cheap

The plywood is very cheap compared to all the other things you'll end up having to buy! The costs add up faster than you would ever imagine, but building the cabinet (or in my case just a desktop controller) is half the fun!